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Comment by boxed | Hacker News Reader

So.. secret codes are a myth, and here are some examples of secret codes?

"Damning with faint praise" is hardly a secret code.

Please refrain from willingly picking the naive interpretation when you've understood my point perfectly fine, it's against the rules of this website.

...sigh:

Secret codes as in "watermark-level omission of characters" are a myth. Lingo and jargon do however exist, and convey meaning in a particularly subtle way. They are shared and taught by culture, not by a secret handbook passed down from generation to generation. See also dogwhistling.

The goal is to protect the issuer, not to selflessly inform the recipient.

This reminds me of the joke whose punch line is

> You will be lucky to have this person work for you.

"I cannot recommend X too highly. X always served as an example to their colleagues. The quality of X's code was unequalled in our department, and X's work always merited special attention." (etc)

> I cannot recommend X too highly

This isn't a veiled statement. It's outright dunking on the applicant.

It can be interpreted both ways: "I cannot recommend X too highly (because they suck)" vs "I cannot recommend X too highly (because whatever praise I give will be inadequate)"

If praise is the intent, it would be phrased as "... cannot recommend X highly enough"

I disagree.

Not every opinion is equally valid

My take away from this is that any positive thing written in a letter of recommendation can be read as sarcasm by an English speaker.

I think there's some deeper issue with the language/culture here.

Every language has turns of phrase that are not necessarily intuitive to non-native speakers.

I think the line is

> you would be lucky to get this employee to work for you!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)

"In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language..."

May HR personnel live in interesting times.

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